


Symptoms of Affection

by 1shinymess (magpie4shinies)



Category: Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
Genre: 365 day challenge, Eggsy is an adorable little shit, Gen, M/M, but I didn't want anyone to be surprised later, characters will expand as more are added, so far - Freeform, the pairing is really just the & for now
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-21
Updated: 2015-03-24
Packaged: 2018-03-18 20:40:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3583266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magpie4shinies/pseuds/1shinymess
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eggsy is trying to work on 'transforming' like Harry said, but it's hard to do when the man who offered to help isn't around to offer timely advice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Matter of the Glasses

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wtb (winzler)](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=wtb+%28winzler%29), [DragonWarden](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DragonWarden/gifts).



Eggsy met his own dubious expression in the awful mirror topping the glasses display.

“Did you want to buy a pair?” 

Eggsy blinked, looking away from his expression in the shitty mirror to the girl in the blue Tesco polo shirt. Her tone was caught somewhere between bored and suspicious even as she glanced him over curiously, eyes lingering at his thighs and hands. It never failed to amuse him the difference it made when he left the house in jeans and his adidas rather than one of the suits the shop had been turning out for him periodically. _Young entrepreneur or chav depending on the weather, eh?_

He glanced at the sliver of his face visible in the smudged mirror: his reflection gave him an awful look, curving faintly along the warped plastic of the old stand and incredibly disapproving in the frames. The arms were dark - brown or black depending on how he turned into the light. It seemed like more of a side-effect of how thin the plastic was rather than a deliberate choice. The frames were of the same material, a fair bit smaller than the Kingsman glasses he’d been using. He looked...slightly less like a child borrowing da’s glasses, but not much. The body wasn’t thick enough to support Merlin’s cameras anyway. 

“Nah, don’t think so,” Eggsy murmured, plucking them from his head and then smiling sheepishly at the girl. “Think you could point me to the macaroni cheese?” 

Well. He’d tried. 

~

The problem remained though: the typical Kingsman frames, well and good as far as props went, and incredible as accessories to the gentleman spy, didn’t really suit him at all. Eggsy pondered his reflection once more, this time in the reflective metal in the dining room at the tailor shop while he waited for Merlin to finish whatever had called his attention away from Eggsy’s pre-mission briefing. The larger frames that had suited Harry’s broad features nearly dwarfed Eggsy’s, and the longer he wore them, the more he saw Harry. The ache of lost potential there was finally starting to fade. He and Harry had never gotten the chance to really be...what, _friends? Father-figure to fuck-up, stand-in son?_ ..close. They’d only had a handful of days to get to know one another after Harry woke up from his coma before Arthur had sent him to Kentucky.

He was starting to think it would be alright to let go of some of the trappings he’d assumed immediately following Harry’s death. The ode (or homage, or psychological harbinger) was starting to feel like it was doing more harm than good. The problem was that he really had no idea what he was doing. Harry had talked a good game about getting him up to snuff as a gentleman and then gone off and died, and now Eggsy was adrift. 

He rocked back on his heels, thoughtfully for another moment, looking over his hair as best as he could in the distorted curved reflection the piping presented before he shrugged and decided he’d stared at his expression long enough and moved to Merlin’s desk. He hadn’t taken up Arthur’s mantle yet, but only in name. Eggsy hoped he was training someone to help out with one or the other of the roles he was handling: he was starting to look a bit washed out from the work. The desk looked a bit different than it had the one time Eggsy had been in the room while it had been Arthur’s domain: the mostly clean desk and ink blotter had been replaced by a thick stack of pads - the posh kind with the heavy unlined paper - and a handful of pens in a heavy stone cup. 

A small, thin laptop was currently closed and pushed off to the side. Eggsy had yet to see Merlin actually use it: he was either handling his business on his tablet or he was at his heavy duty computer bay. His outbox was full, but Eggsy smothered that burst of curiosity before it landed him stuck outside the office when unattended like he was back in primary. He leaned his hip against the desk and then straightened. Those were Merlin’s glasses.

 _Merlin’s glasses._ Just there, arms folded in, set near the opening of the inbox which was why Eggsy hadn’t seen them before. He found himself reaching out and automatically catching hold of them. His hand paused briefly on the return trip before he mentally shrugged. In for a penny and all, and he’d already crossed the boundary by putting his grubby agent-fingers all over Merlin’s tech. Merlin’s glasses were significantly different from the ones still perched on Eggsy’s face. The frame only hugged the top of the lenses and the bridge was thinner and made of metal. Eggsy glanced at the false panel by the fireplace and then back to the glasses, wondering if he had enough time. Merlin had been gone for at least five minutes by now: did that mean he’d be right back, or was it symptomatic of a longer delay?

 _Well, fuck it._ Eggsy plucked his own glasses off, folded the arms in, and laid them down (respectfully) on the desk, then slid Merlin’s on. They were large, of course, and immediately started to slide down the bridge of Eggsy’s nose. He tilted his head, halting the descent, and pulled his phone out. He swiped the camera awake and flipped the picture so he could see what his phone saw in the screen and considered himself with the new glasses. 

The view was a bit odd, but Eggsy was pleased to find no emotional dissonance. Cosmetically… “Hm. Not bad, bruv,” he murmured, pulling the phone back to get a look of his whole face. The alternate bridge of the glasses leant him an artificially stern air that was immediately destroyed when he smiled faintly. It was easier to see his eyes like this. The quality was, of course, impeccable: Merlin wouldn’t have accepted any less in anyone’s gear, let alone his own. They felt just as heavy as his others despite the invisible lower half of the frames he noticed as he pressed them higher up the bridge of his nose automatically. He wondered what other little tricks Merlin had wired into them. “Bet I could call down a missile strike with these…” 

“You aren’t far off,” Merlin said drily from much too close and Eggsy jumped and whirled in his direction, pressing the glasses into his face gently so as to avoid losing them to torsion and the law of motion. 

“Merlin! Ah. Right. I was just…”

Merlin set his tablet down and crossed his arms, waiting. When Eggsy finally just offered a sheepish smile, he rolled his eyes and reached out with both hands. Eggsy held very still as those deadly, competent hands got very close to his squishy eyes and then gently curled into the gap along the corners where the arms folded and tugged the glasses free.

When he blinked his eyes open, Merlin was holding the glasses between them at eye level for Eggsy. “These? These are mine.”

Eggsy nodded immediately. Merlin held his eyes sternly for a moment and then stepped away and around the desk. 

“Ah, before we get started again…”

Merlin looked at him, brow furrowed faintly as his fingers automatically cleaned the lenses with a soft cloth from his pocket. 

“D’you think you could do me a pair like that?” Eggsy nodded to Merlin’s glasses in his hands even as he retrieved his own pair. 

Merlin frowned. “What’s wrong with the ones you were issued?”

“Nothing! Nothing. I was just thinking, is all.” Eggsy busied himself with meticulously unfolding the arms and sliding them back on. He put on a smile when he looked up. “What’s this about Edinburgh, then? It’s the middle of fucking winter, bruv. Who the fuck goes to ground in _Edinburgh_?”

Merlin was quiet for a moment and then glanced down at his tablet, typing a few commands. A sound bite - no a video. Eggsy turned and there was the clip playing on the screen over the fireplace. 

“We believe they have ties to several organizations that have been on our watch list for years…”


	2. Prestidigitation

_Gone for crisps. Text if you need anything._ Eggsy had to scratch the note out three times as the last cheap pen from the 10 pack he’d picked up from Asda when he’d been visiting Jerome a couple weeks ago skipped several lines. The lined notebook paper ended up wrinkling and tearing. He smoothed it out as best as he could and set it on the table. It looked remarkably out of place on the polished dark dark wood of the table. Kingsman had decorated the flat while Eggsy was dealing with the awkward position of being both a failed candidate and the one responsible for the survival of the organisation. It had all worked out, of course, but Eggsy could only be grateful he’d been busy during the process. He’d barely been required at all beyond confirming his general needs: _yes, three beds, one crib, a sofa...oh, yeah, expect we’ll need a table, good thinking...probably best to childproof the place while you’re at it…_

They’d gone above and beyond, and everything was...well, _tasteful._ Posh, of course, but in an understated way that actually seemed to Eggsy to assert his newfound wealth. He’d looked up the designer marked on the sort of bare faced clock hanging in the kitchen - a full traditional monstrosity of a grandfather clock in the entry of course - on a lark and spent five minutes gasping over the cost. Things like that reminded Eggsy how far he still had to go: if he’d been left to do the decorating, the house would’ve wound up all done in whatever midrange line the shop had on sale, or better: he would’ve likelier ordered it all on Amazon and saved himself the trouble of transportation by getting it shipped free. His mum wouldn’t have cried when she saw it, that was for sure. 

But Eggsy appreciated the house as it was. Everything looked so nice, but it was all sturdy enough to survive Daisy chasing JB about the place, and it looked ritzy enough that his mum still glanced about as though she weren’t sure she’d dreamed the last few months of living in it. He just never would’ve gone for it on his own: wouldn’t have even considered it, honestly, and not because of the cost. 

Well, not _just_ because of the cost. It turned out Kingsman received “charitable donations” per operation from the authorities that were in the know, and saving the entire bloody world and freeing the royal family of several nations seemed to rank pretty high on the list of importance for most of those countries. Kingsman kept the lion’s share of the funds, but Eggsy still had had to sit down when Merlin had explained it all to him. So it wasn’t the cost, exactly, so much as...well, he wouldn’t have known where to start. He still wouldn’t know how to go about acquiring an end table that looked like modern art, or a couch which was some fantastic fabric that felt lamb soft and resisted stains beyond any logical expectations. 

Eggsy was struck by the disparity in his surroundings - in himself - once more, looking at the ragged lined sheet of paper he’d torn from the cheap spiral pad he’d picked up at the same place he’d bought the pens.

Merlin’s voice in his ear through his - newly designed - glasses speaker was a welcome distraction. _”We have a situation, Galahad. I’d like your input. You may be sent on extended assignment. Sorry to call you in on your day off.”_

Eggsy found tension draining from his shoulders and wondered, not for the first time, if he wasn’t more than a little fucked up in the head. Surely he shouldn’t be more comfortable entering the lion’s den - or perhaps, the waiting area for the den? - than he was in his own house? 

But there it was. “I’ll be right in.”

_”I’ve sent the car. It should arrive in...eight minutes.”_

Eggsy glanced down at himself in a faded red jumper and jeans and made for the stairs. “Let ‘em know I’ll be out in a tick.” 

On his way out, Eggsy put out JB’s dinner and scribbled over his earlier note as best as he could with the spotty pen. He hesitated briefly, but didn’t want to worry anyone unless he received actual orders. _Got called into the office for a last minute commission. Don’t hold tea._

The car was waiting outside, blandly tasteful as always. Eggsy straightened his cuffs with a faint sigh and locked up behind him. 

~

When Eggsy entered the dining room, Merlin was standing in front of the screen over the fireplace, focused on the tablet in his hands. He was dressed in gray slacks and a low cut dark green cardigan over a white button down with a gray tie tucked under, more casual than Eggsy had seen him lately, more _Merlin_ than Arthur’s-stand-in. It looked nice though. Eggsy preferred him looking like he had in training before he had to put on the dog and pony show for...well, however wrote the checks. The tie went well with his pants and the cardigan brought out his eyes. 

His eyes darted up to the door when Eggsy finally stepped into the room. “Eggsy, good. Watch this.” 

Eggsy settled beside him, falling automatically into a bastardized rest somewhere between At Ease and Parade despite the faint pull of fabric stretching along his shoulders as he linked hands to elbows behind his back. The suits were actually quite sturdy, and flexible enough to shoot ten guys while doing backflips and still look presentable for tea with the queen, so he wasn’t worried about ruining the lines. 

The image on the screen - blueprints for a compound Eggsy didn’t recognize - was replaced by a video clip, obviously an agent’s glasses feed, pulled mid-mission. The agent was walking at a normal pace behind a suited guide - nothing so nice as the suits slowly filling up Eggsy’s closet, but certainly better than anything he’d ever seen before Harry had whisked him off to Kingsman like Cinderella’s fairy godmother. The agent was following the civilian, or potential target, down a cream colored hall. Dark blue plush carpeting was covered with a long purple-red throw rug. For the moment, nothing appeared to be happening. Eggsy considered what he could see and judged the feed was probably from Kay or Bedevire from the height of the feed relative to the doorways being passed. 

The aid turned down a hall, giving Eggsy a brief glimpse of his profile before he was opening a door and stepping into a room. _”You can wait here, Ambassador. He’ll be right in.”_

Whichever agent it was swept the room as he entered. Eggsy only caught another small look at the aid as he ducked back out of the room and pulled the door behind him. He glanced at Merlin, but his eyes were locked on the screen and he’d started leaning in. Eggsy took it as the cue it was and focused, assuming whatever Merlin wanted him to see would be starting soon. 

The room was similar to the hall in the cream colored walls and blue/red carpeting, but there were a few sofas and two end tables. The far wall was a floor to ceiling built in shelving unit stacked full of books without a title on the spines as far as Eggsy could make out. There were no windows to indicate the room was exterior, though from the look of the furniture which seemed somewhat similar to a few of the pieces of his own, and how the man had addressed the agent as “ambassador,” he’d wager the building had few exterior windows for security. Certainly that was likely if there were shady things occurring that people wanted to keep away from public scrutiny. 

For a moment, that was it. Eggsy was stuck watching as the agent moved to the bookshelves and removed one of the novels, then settled into the nearest chair (which happened to conveniently face the single access point to the room). The book was set on the chair of the arm as the agent looked down to unbutton his suit jacket, giving Eggsy more of a look at the suit and finally a glimpse of the agent’s faintly scarred knuckles. _Bedivere, then._

Then he frowned. Were Bedivere’s hands...trembling? 

“ _Bedivere, what’s wrong?”_ Merlin asked in the recording. 

There was a moment where Bedivere’s hands stilled. “ _Oh...head-rush._ ”

Eggsy glanced at Merlin and Merlin tipped his chin toward the screen without turning his head. 

Merlin’s response was immediate: “ _Use your pocket square right now and get out of there, Bedivere._ ” 

Bedevere stood and Eggsy’s hands tightened around his own arms painfully as he remembered a similar situation. “Merlin…”

“He’s fine.”

Reassured but still off-center from...well, from several things, Eggsy turned back to the video and realized Bedivere had followed Merlin’s suggestion and was making his way to the door, knuckles and a flicker of purple at the edge of the camera’s range. It was locked, of course, but even with an obviously affected grip, no Kingsman would ever miss a shot that close. His steps into the hall steadied increasingly the further he got from the room. There was no one else in the hall, nor did Bedivere encounter anyone until he passed through a door very similar to every other one he’d passed into what appeared to be the main area. 

He made notes of the faces and all potentially identifiable markers as Bedivere made his way out of the building that - thankfully - didn’t appear to have an alarm. 

Merlin halted the video as Bedivere was getting into the third passing taxi. Eggsy glanced at him, but his attention was still on the screen so Eggsy turned back as well. The video had been...affecting, but Eggsy had the feeling Merlin had called him in for this bit here, rather than making Eggsy relive the last few minutes of Harry’s life with any deliberate or malicious design. So. What could he see that Merlin might want his unbiased opinion on?

The street was average - could’ve been anywhere, really, but after a moment, Eggsy realized there was a variety in the language on the various business signs: primarily English, but also French. Way more than bad taste could account for.

There were a few couples and small groups walking about on either side of the street, mostly caught in the edges of the frame. None of them were looking at Bedivere. Then Eggsy noticed a reflection in the dark-curtain-backed cafe window and frowned. Looked like someone was waiting on Bedivere, checking if he’d get out? Or if he had back up, perhaps?

“Zoom in on the cafe window, eh?” Eggsy murmured. “Looks like Bedivere picked up an admirer.”

Merlin hummed thoughtfully. “We performed a thorough sweep at the contact point and came up clean. While suspicious, the presence alone doesn't indicate enemy presence.”

Eggsy cocked a brow but watched the detailed zoom render without turning. “Don’t mean it’s not there either, does it...oh, what the hell.”

Somehow, impossibly, it was Edward Prince staring back out of that reflection. There was no mistaking him even with the faint blur caused by the cafe windows. Eggsy had shot him in the head just three weeks ago. “Seriously, did someone pass about like… _really_ effective Wheaties or something? Do all the bad guys have some sort of ‘resurrection pill’ laying ‘round now? You know I shot this bastard. You have the feed!”

Merlin nodded and made a note on his tablet, then closed down the video and deactivated the screen. “Edward Prince had an identical twin brother.”

Eggsy snorted. “Shut up. He did not.”

Merlin cocked a brow. “He was, to all intents and purposes, out of the business. We’ve got Bedivere on the move for another 16 hours while any potentially ingested material has time to run its course. We won’t have another breach like the last one.”

Eggsy pursed his lips. “So...his twin brother. We’re getting into real James Bond shit now, eh? Fantastic. I don’t imagine he much likes I had to kill his bruv to avoid half Vancouver being turned into a fucking sauna.”

Merlin shrugged, setting the tablet down and tugging his glasses low enough that he could easily rub the bridge of his nose. “Bedivere was our only free agent on active duty, unfortunately. Everyone else is assigned, injured, or even closer to their last assignment than you.”

It took Eggsy a moment to connect the dots. “Oh! Right.” He looked at the paused image for a moment until he realized he was leaning hard on his right leg. He forced himself to straighten up, tugging his shirt sleeves straight from under his suit jacket. ““Well. No help for it, is there?” 

Merlin remained a sharp profile, skin cooled faintly in the artificial glow from the screen before he deactivated it with a short swipe, where he turned to Eggsy. The objective distance he’d assumed faded to something warmer, and faintly rueful. “I am sorry about interrupting your time with your family.”

Eggsy shrugged and pushed off the table past him, clapping his shoulder on the way by. “No worries, mate.” He was two steps away before his brain processed the feedback from the newly-callused tips of his fingers: _soft._ Softer than anything Eggsy had felt before. It almost tickled even as a tactile memory. He pressed his fingers into an awkward fist, digging the tips into the heel of his palm. 

Merlin’s desk was laid out as it had been before, so Eggsy took up a sheet from the fine paper set aside and the pen laid out on the desk. He twisted the cap loose and set the nib - _of course they were,_ he’d thought the first time he’d seen one uncapped - to the paper. 

_Commission was more last minute than I thought. I’ll be joining the client on his trip to finish up the suit he ordered three days ago since he’s richer than Lucifer himself, or so says my boss. Love you & Daisy. (I’ll ask for extra time off later to make up for ducking out.)_

_Eggsy_

Eggsy recapped the pen and folded the sheet in half, the smooth heavy weight of it pleasant to the touch. This was the kind of paper that belonged on the table in the kitchen he hadn’t decorated. He considered it a moment and then shrugged, deciding to nick some when he returned to see if he really liked it enough to buy it special. 

“Can you have this delivered to my mum?” he asked, gesturing with the letter in demonstration. He palmed the pen in the other hand, sliding it surreptitiously up the inside of his wrist and under his shirtsleeve. There was barely enough space in the cuff to allow it. 

“Of course. Just leave it on the desk and someone’ll bring it around,” Merlin nodded, then his head tilted faintly, as it sometimes did when someone spoke to him through his glasses. After a moment, he nodded. “The jet is fueled and packed with what you’ll need.”

Eggsy grinned, dropping the letter as ordered. “You’re the best, guv.”

~

On the plane three minutes after the impossible vertical takeoff, Eggsy’s glasses feed activated, showing him Merlin’s unamused face. _“It may look similar, but it is not a standard issue poison pen. It’s a high powered laser prototype capable of producing a 500 milliwatt beam. If you look at it directly, you will certainly go blind. Your eyes may melt out of your skull. If you break it or lose it, I will be very upset.”_

Eggsy choked on his biscuit. “I’ll...uh, return this, then. Or just...leave it on the plane.”

Merlin frowned. “ _Oh, don’t do that. It was nearly ready for a field test anyway. There’s just the occasional fire we were still trying to work out._ ”

“Oh? Just the occasional fire?” Merlin hummed an affirmative and Eggsy considered the weight of it in his inner breast pocket and then gingerly withdrew it and placed it on the seat nearest him. “Could you maybe make us up one that’s...oh, I don’t know, just a pen? In case someone’s baby sis gets hold of it, I mean?”

_“I should hope your sister doesn't go near this prototype...or indeed, the poison pen I know you carry.”_

Eggsy nodded immediately and then shrugged, unable to communicate the worry Daisy’s constant curiosity sometimes caused him. 

Merlin hesitated to close the feed long enough to say. _“I’ll replace the innards of one of the poison pens. It’ll be waiting when you return._ ”

Eggsy smiled faintly. “Thanks, Merlin.”


End file.
